Film Review | Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

What if Abraham Lincoln, esteemed 16th President of the United States, was a vampire hunter? This is the laughable premise on hand in Timur Bekmambetov’s faux-historical 3D action movie, imaginatively titled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith (who also wrote the screenplay).
Bekmambetov’s film chooses to put Lincoln’s (an impressive central performance from Benjamin Walker) better-known deeds on the back-burner, focusing instead on the President’s secret life as a vampire hunter. Lincoln’s motivations for hunting the undead are established early on via a flashback of his mother’s death at the hands of a bloodsucker. From then on, the plot zips along at a furious pace as Lincoln is befriended by Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), trained in the ways of vampire-slaying and seeks vengeance on the creatures’ leader Adam (Rufus Sewell).